We Loved to Eat

Memories of Midwestern Family Recipes and Café Food

Foreword

My mom and dad had a habit. Every morning as we sat at the breakfast table mom and dad would discuss our next meal.

Dad says, “What are we going to have for lunch?”

or

Mom says, “Art, what do you want for lunch?”

Then at lunch they would be invariably discussing,

Dad says, “What are we having for dinner?”

or

Mom says, “What do you want for dinner?”

Our lives seemed to revolve around food even though this wasn’t strictly true. It just seemed that way. We did many other things and focused on lots of stuff that didn’t involve food. I guess. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just wish everything didn’t revolve around food, but it really did.

Anyway…

Food was nourishment but it was also pleasure. A well-made recipe got special attention and everybody ooohed and aahed when it was especially good. We remembered these dishes and traded around recipes written on 3 x 5 index cards that would go in a little metal recipe box. “Margie, can I get that recipe for the potato salad you made? It was really good.”  It didn’t have to be only home cooked food. We also zeroed in on good restaurants and cafes anywhere we went and remembered where the good ones were so we could go again. Dad had his special Italian restaurants in Des Moines that he liked. There wasn’t much to choose from in Marshalltown but what there was was good old-fashioned American food. I’m 100% positive that life wouldn’t have been as wonderful if it weren’t for the good food we enjoyed. Memories are made of good food. I think back and many of my best memories are of a special dish someone would make and serve. It’s just that way.

Let me get one thing straight: we weren’t gluttons. Nobody got terribly fat except my brother but that was when he left home and went off into the wide world and it wasn’t because of food per se. It was because he had some psychological problems and that’s a whole other story for a whole other book. Also, even though most of the food we ate wasn’t what one might strictly call health food it was healthy enough and that was just fine. We didn’t have fast food back then and I doubt we would have eaten it very much if it was. Fast food hadn’t even been invented yet when I was growing up and when it was finally introduced, we ate it on very rare occasions.

Here I offer you my memories of what we ate and enjoyed when I was growing up and then a bit into what I ate as a college student. I include recipes. Maybe you will relate to this and have a few memories of your own.

Chapter One

My first memory of food was when we lived in a second-floor apartment in a big Victorian house in Marshalltown, Iowa on North Street. I have other fond memories of North Street that don’t revolve around food. For example, North Street, when I was a toddler and then just before we moved to Fifteenth Avenue and kindergarten, was lined with towering elm trees with cathedral-like branches over the street. It was a great place to live. These majestic trees eventually succumbed to Dutch Elm disease, so they are there no longer but we enjoyed them as long as they were there. Mom took us to Riverview Cemetery that was a few blocks away, because it was beautifully landscaped and the best park you could think of even though it was a little bit weird with all the tombstones to look at and play around.  Other than that, food was central. In that second-floor apartment my mom made homemade noodles from a simple recipe that was handed down to her from her farm wife mom, my German grandmother. It was my first favorite thing to eat.

It was simple because the only ingredients were flour, eggs, a pinch of salt and water. Maybe a little oil. My mom piled the flour into a mound on the table, plopped the eggs in a shallow well she made in the center of the flour and then proceeded to mix it all with her hands gathering flour from the edges and incorporating the eggs into it gradually. When it was all mixed adequately, she would roll the dough out thin with a rolling pin, then roll the flat sheet into a long spiral. Then she cut the dough into thin strips. To the strips she added more flour to keep them from sticking together and then she spread them out on the table to dry a little bit. She made chicken with the noodles or just served them boiled plain and with plenty of butter. The noodles were chewy and delicious. My dad called me the Noodle Kid because I ate them with gusto! I was 3 or 4 years old.

Homemade Egg Noodles

Ingredients

3 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Instructions

Mound on a clean counter 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour. Make a well in the center and add to the well 3 large eggs. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork incorporating a little flour as you go until the eggs are mixed and slightly thickened. Using the fingertips of one hand gradually incorporate the flour into the eggs and blend until you have a smooth but not too stiff dough. If the dough feels too dry you can add a little water. If it’s too sticky you can add a little flour.

Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Roll out onto a lightly floured counter until it’s thin — a 1/4” thick or less. Sprinkle a little flour over the whole thing and roll the sheet up like a cinnamon roll.

Using a sharp knife or pizza cutting wheel to cut through the noodles roll into long strips, however narrow or wide you like. Let them dry on the table for an hour.

You can cook them immediately by adding them to a pot of boiling water to cook until tender to the bite, about 2-3 minutes. Using tongs remove them from the cooking water. These noodles are great in Chicken and Noodles, with Beef Stroganoff or with Swedish Meatballs. They’re also outstanding with just butter and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

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We didn’t have Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Pepperidge Farm Goldfish that everyone feeds their kids nowadays. Pizza rolls did not exist nor were there any frozen pizzas in the dairy case so the only time a kid could have pizza was when their folks took them to a pizzeria. There were saltine crackers and canned soup, cold cuts from the butcher – usually bologna; sometimes cookies – usually sandwich style with icing in the middle like Oreos. My mom liked the almond windmill cookies, and we ate them dipped in milk. Peanut butter sandwiches ruled the day and later some friend showed me how to spread the bread with butter then spread the peanut butter after that to keep the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of my mouth. In those days nothing, not even hydrogenated oils, had been added to the peanut butter we ate. I did not know this at the time, but it turns out that the proteins in PB absorb water and make it thicker when it’s in your mouth. It was a disconcerting feeling to havethe peanut butter sticking. Not necessarily easy to get it out.

Turkey Tragedy

Once my dad got a live turkey as a Christmas gift from where he worked. He knew what to do with live game so he took the turkey out to the back yard to slaughter it. Then, as I watched in horror, he chopped off the head of the turkey with a hatchet and let go of it.  The turkey proceeded to flop around spewing blood all over the place. I guess he then defeathered and gutted it, but I had already beat a hasty retreat back to the house, so I missed that part. All I remember is the flopping. My dad was a hunter trained by his own father to hunt and fish so we had a lot of wild game on our table. More about that later. This turkey tragedy set me up for a predilection for not eating wild game.

Mayer’s North Street Market

We kids had the run of the neighborhood and in the summer, we’d troop over to Mayer’s North Street Market which was a half block from our house. In the market we would wander up and down the aisles looking at all the items which to our youngster minds was fascinating. After we had seen enough, we would end up at the ice cream freezer where I would choose a blue popsicle. I think it was raspberry flavored and it was my favorite. The blue would stain your tongue blue. Who knows what made it blue or if the blue was safe to ingest. In those days people didn’t know what they know today. For example, mom cooked in an aluminum skillet without a second thought.  When we got older we rolled mercury around in our hands as a toy and our folks sprayed asbestos on the Christmas tree as a decoration. Almost every adult smoked, of course – no one knew about secondhand smoke – and there was lead in paint, DDT for mosquito abatement, and no seat belts in cars. I wonder if blue popsicles are still sold. I haven’t had one since I was 4 years old and I’m 73 now so who knows?